5/14/2019 Android Overview

Android - Overview
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What is Android?

Android is an open source and Linux-based Operating System for mobile devices such as
smartphones and tablet computers. Android was developed by the Open Handset Alliance,
led by Google, and other companies.

Android offers a unified approach to application development for mobile devices which
means developers need only develop for Android, and their applications should be able to
run on different devices powered by Android.

The first beta version of the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) was released by
Google in 2007 where as the first commercial version, Android 1.0, was released in
September 2008.

On June 27, 2012, at the Google I/O conference, Google announced the next Android
version, 4.1 Jelly
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improving the user interface, both in terms of functionality and performance.

The source code for Android is available Accept

under free and open source software licenses.
Google publishes most of the code under the Apache License version 2.0 and the rest,
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Linux kernel changes, under the GNU General Public License version 2.

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Why Android ?

Features of Android
Android is a powerful operating system competing with Apple 4GS and supports great
features. Few of them are listed below −

Sr.No. Feature & Description

1 Beautiful UI

Android OS basic screen provides a beautiful and intuitive user interface.

2 Connectivity

GSM/EDGE, IDEN, CDMA, EV-DO, UMTS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, LTE, NFC and WiMAX.

3 Storage

SQLite, a lightweight relational database, is used for data storage purposes.

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4 Media support
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H.263, H.264, MPEG-4 SP, AMR, AMR-WB, AAC, HE-AAC, AAC 5.1, MP3, MIDI,
Ogg Vorbis, WAV, JPEG, PNG, GIF, and BMP.
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5 Messaging

SMS and MMS

6 Web browser

Based on the open-source WebKit layout engine, coupled with Chrome's V8

JavaScript engine supporting HTML5 and CSS3.

7 Multi-touch

Android has native support for multi-touch which was initially made available in
handsets such as the HTC Hero.

8 Multi-tasking

User can jump from one task to another and same time various application can
run simultaneously.

9 Resizable widgets

Widgets are resizable, so users can expand them to show more content or
shrink them to save space.

10 Multi-Language

Supports single direction and bi-directional text.

11 GCM

Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) is a service that lets developers send short
message data to their users on Android devices, without needing a proprietary
sync solution.

12 Wi-Fi Direct

A technology that lets apps discover and pair directly, over a high-bandwidth
peer-to-peer connection.

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A popular NFC-based technology that lets users instantly share, just by

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touching two NFC-enabled phones together.

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Android Applications
Android applications are usually developed in the Java language using the Android
Software Development Kit.

Once developed, Android applications can be packaged easily and sold out either through a
store such as Google Play, SlideME, Opera Mobile Store, Mobango, F-droid and the
Amazon Appstore.

Android powers hundreds of millions of mobile devices in more than 190 countries around
the world. It's the largest installed base of any mobile platform and growing fast. Every
day more than 1 million new Android devices are activated worldwide.

This tutorial has been written with an aim to teach you how to develop and package
Android application. We will start from environment setup for Android application
programming and then drill down to look into various aspects of Android applications.

Categories of Android applications

There are many android applications in the market. The top categories are −

History of Android
The code names of android ranges from A to N currently, such as Aestro, Blender,
Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwitch, Jelly Bean,
KitKat, Lollipop and Marshmallow. Let's understand the android history in a sequence.

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What is API level?

API Level is an integer value that uniquely identifies the framework API
revision offered by a version of the Android platform.

Platform Version API VERSION_CODE

Level

Android 6.0 23 MARSHMALLOW

Android 5.1 22 LOLLIPOP_MR1

Android 5.0 21 LOLLIPOP

Android 4.4W 20 KITKAT_WATCH KitKat for Wearables

Only

Android 4.4 19 KITKAT

Android 4.3 18 JELLY_BEAN_MR2

Android 4.2, 4.2.2 17 JELLY_BEAN_MR1

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Android 4.0.3, 4.0.4 15 ICE_CREAM_SANDWICH_MR1

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Android 4.0, 4.0.1, 14 ICE_CREAM_SANDWICH
4.0.2 Learn more

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Android 3.2 13 HONEYCOMB_MR2

Android 3.1.x 12 HONEYCOMB_MR1

Android 3.0.x 11 HONEYCOMB

Android 2.3.4 10 GINGERBREAD_MR1

Android 2.3.3

Android 2.3.2 9 GINGERBREAD

Android 2.3.1

Android 2.3

Android 2.2.x 8 FROYO

Android 2.1.x 7 ECLAIR_MR1

Android 2.0.1 6 ECLAIR_0_1

Android 2.0 5 ECLAIR

Android 1.6 4 DONUT

Android 1.5 3 CUPCAKE

Android 1.1 2 BASE_1_1

Android 1.0 1 BASE

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